Cyborg Pals: Satellite Reign Launches Co-op Mode

Share this:

A syndicate of one is no syndicate at all. It’s a small business at best. Something you run on the kitchen table. An Etsy store, maybe. No, if you want to be a syndicate – a megacorp – you really need cool killer cyborg pals. So huzzah! After a stretch in open beta, the Syndicate-inspired tactical cybersquad action of Satellite Reign [official site] is launching its four-player co-op. Four isn’t quite enough to be a syndicate but it’s perhaps enough to consider hiring a small office in an arcology.

Satellite Reign’s Kickstarter campaign fell short of the stretch goal to add a co-op campaign but hey, developers 5 Lives Studios have been working on it anyway. They launched co-op into open beta in June, and this week it’s live in the main version of the game.

Now you and your pals can take to the neon-lit streets of our grim dystopian future together, which I’d imagine means you can pull off canny plans with greater skill as you don’t have to control all four agents yourself. Or so I’d imagine. I’ll have to round up some folks and see how it works out. Maybe four players means more mayhem and tomfoolery. That’s probably it, isn’t it?

Satellite Reign, to refresh your memory, is a squad-based tactical action game set in the grim dystopian future, where you lead a small team of cyborgs robbing, killing, and generally getting up to no good. Read what Adam made of it.

Satellite Reign is half-price on Steam for a fortnight too, down to £11.49/13,99€/$14.99.

I liked it alot. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but I found it atmospheric, compelling and fun enough to want to do all the side quests and run the game to completion in my 36 hours with it. It mostly shines when played as a stealth infiltration game rather than as a straight combat game like Syndicate. The open world works nicely, allowing the player to approach the numerous infiltration targets from multiple entrances. The rest of the world is a little under-used, but there’s alot of aspects to the game that seem half-thought out and unpolished. For example, if you put all your XP into the hacking and stealth skills the game can become almost too easy with the Infiltrator your main (sometimes only) workhorse and the support class almost entirely unused. Don’t buy this expecting AAA game quality, more that it’s a fun modern spin on the Syndicate games. I really hope a sequel is in the works.

You wander around the city freely, but there are lots of different restricted areas and facilities owned by different corps, which you infiltrate on missions to grab stuff or do things.

They added in an ironman mode at a later date, which I ought to give a try. A lot of the time the most fun I had with the game was when I’d infiltrated a facility, messed up and raised the alarm, and had to complete and get out as increasing numbers of heavily armed corp security tried to stop you.

It feels like it would be suited to co-op in a similar fashion to how Dawn of War 2 was, only likely more tactical.

Also, for lack of an edit function, the visual design is awesome, they really captured that cyberpunk aesthetic in the city. Things get a bit drab when you get to the industrial district (to be expected really), but in general, each area has its “feel”, with the slummy “Downtown” district contrasting against something like the more rich feeling “Grid” district.

One thing that I also noticed is that even all the signs and billboards (of which there are quite a few unique ones dotted around) are nicely hi-res, where in most games they tend to look blurry closeup. I suspect that may have to do with this being a PC-only title and not needing to hold back on things like that for console memory restraints.

It is “Very Positive” with ~1300 reviews on Steam, and it’s half price at the moment. Now would be a good time to pick it up.
If it helps, I like it too. Can’t wait to try the Coop with a chum this evening. Have been holding off it until it was out of beta.

I wanted to like this game. It wasn’t the gameplay that put me off, however (I haven’t played enough to make that call). It’s that the name of the bad guy and his evil corporation are based on a real person and his real company. So every time they get mentioned, my sense of immersion is punted straight out the window.

Said guy (and company) aren’t the most well-known entities, so chances are this isn’t going to be a problem for very many other people. But the whole thing just feels like an advertisement to me, and I can’t stand it.